Hello, and welcome to, "Xindaris made another hold he wants tested, and this one is sort of middling to big too!"

The hold is called These Metallic Gears of Time, a reference to its plot having to do with temporal shenanigans and also a Metal Gear reference since it's an entire hold all about stealth (the "monsters don't even move" scripted kind). It has six actual puzzle levels (+an "intro cutscene" level and a postmastery with just two scrapped rooms in it), and you play as an unarmed citizen character making use of preplaced mimics for most of it. There's also a "custom element" that's really just that thing Beethro could do at the very end of TSS but in a slightly different flavor. I feel there are some good to great puzzles here (at least relatively speaking among those I've made), so it'd be a shame not to at least try to push it out the door toward completion. So...

What needs to be done to finish the hold (the necessary):
-Testing, lots of testing, every room. As usual, I'm the only person who's even seen what's in this hold ever before. So I need to know what's good, what's bad, what's broken, where checkpoints were forgotten or need to be added, and so on.

-Minor scripting/graphical changes, mostly on me. The way the final level handles "character swapping" uses a character called "Beethro" that looks like a guard instead because actual "Beethro" character aggros monsters, and that's no good here. I'm going to have to ask permission to use screenshotted Beethro sprite trickery, I think. Aside from that, if you notice some incorrect or offputting grammar in the script, or think of something which logically "should" happen cosmetically but doesn't, please let me know.

-Also, that thing with character role swapping and temporal projections needs to stay working the way it is (or close enough anyway) in order in order for the Final Puzzle of the last level to make any narrative sense at all. But that's more of a thing that needs to not happen? I just think it's wisest to let people know about that bit ahead of time.

What I wish I could do before it's done (the dream):
-Voice acting? The hold has lots of chatter, and it'd be nice to have someone saying it all. I'm planning to handle the main voice in the intro texts myself, but the main character (who features in the very last of those) is a female Negotiator, so I feel disqualified to handle that particular role. Maybe if anyone is interested they could record a few of her lines in the first level and post them here for me to go through?

If "full" voice acting started to happen, there are also some more incidental roles like the guy in the final room and a couple of stalwarts and guards that could use actors who aren't me so the entire hold doesn't sound like me talking to myself. Also Beethro is there in the final level, so a reasonable imitator of him would be needed at that point.

This part is just me dreaming though, it obviously doesn't have to happen to have a successful/complete hold.

Demos for the first puzzle level attached, except 1S1E because LOL nope.

A few thoughts:

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×Entrance: Didn't need most of the orbs. Thankfully. I don't hate orb puzzles most of the time, but having to do one with mimics felt like it might have been a bit much, if the solution hadn't been so simple.

1S: Quick and easy introduction.

1S1W: A bit more complicated. Had to think about using the mimics' swords as leverage for each other. Coming back up the right-hand side was much easier, so I wonder if you could lengthen this side to make it more of a puzzle. Checkpoints in the mimics' area aren't necessary because you always have access to the one on the player's side, and they caused unwanted checkpointing when going through the room afterward clearing it.

1W: Had to understand I could use the player to transfer a weapon into the room. Other than that, another easy one.

1S2W: Some very interesting usage of aumtlich beam freezing. Not sure whether what I did was entirely intended!

2S2W: Okay but, like most platform rooms, it felt like it had a pretty high busywork to puzzle ratio. Didn't use the gentryii heads at all (not sure they could be used for anything, because of how they interact with the platform).

2S1W: Great, just had to realise that the mimics needed to be spaced properly instead of adjacent.

2S: Okay, interesting concept but the room turned out pretty simple. Could the eye have been one space further away?

Budkin Way:
Entrance: I assume this takes place post-Turning? If so, how can both Tueno and New Tueno exist? Or is this earlier in the timeline, and New Tueno is some colonization effort?

1N: This was hilarous!

Facility Depths:

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×
Entrance: The solution is thankfully pretty simple. I'm thankful because orb puzzles are one of DROD's few puzzle types that require "outside" information. Note: since one of the scripts in this room teleports the player, rather than moving them, they can ratchet the mimics northward. It doesn't affect the solution, but it sure looks weird.

1S: I don't like constrained mimic puzzles, but this was bearably easy. That said, while it's a decent introduction, it's also a filler puzzle.

1S 1W: This was fun and easy. You could make it harder by requiring sword-leverage for mimics coming back north, too -- you'd have to bring multiple mimics across the south side -- but that might end up too finicky. And again, it's pretty fun as-is.

1W: I love this mechanic! So cool! Here's my thoughts on this room: you have a great linchpin, followed by cleanup. While the cleanup is by no means tedious, it doesn't add anything to the room, either. I recommend either you focus on the linchpin and simplify the right side of the room, or you develop the right side into an execution puzzle (or include a second linchpin there). Right now, the cleanup is superfluous.

1S 2W: I really liked this room! I'll have to check Nuntar's demo, but I'm pretty sure I followed the intended solution: park the aumtlichs on the pressure plates and stun the mimic in the right place.

2S 1W: Again, this puzzle doesn't tread new ground, but it's fun enough to add to the experience.

2S 2W: I may show my demo for this room, since I absolutely used the gentryii. (In fact, I can't think of how not to use them.) So I thought the room was quite clever. That said, since there's no difference between retrieving the first and second wubbas, you might be better off shortening the room by removing the second wubba. tl;dr: It's fun the first time. It's less fun the second time.

3S 1W: I almost forgot about this one! I'm not sure what the puzzle is. There's no linchpin and execution is light. Don't get me wrong -- I'm just as glad the constructs aren't moving -- but this feels more like an introduction room than a proper puzzle. Am I missing something?

2S: Short and sweet. Simple and effective. Good room!

1S 1E: I'm afraid I have to agree with Nuntar here. This room feels way harder than the rest, and I'm not inclined to work it out. Is there something I'm missing? Some trick that makes everything work out as smoothly as possible? If there is, you might want to give it a subtle signpost so players don't feel like brute-forcing it is the only option.

Other notes:

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×
Cold Storage 1W: There should be dialogue for when a puff gets close to the stalwarts, or if puffs kill all three.

Facility Depths 1W: Seeing a master wall there is a little disconcerting. You might want to move it somewhere more central, or hide it behind some story-based puzzle like the Undercity in TCB.

I really like most of the puzzles so far, and the story feels like it's shaping up to something big and cool. I'll keep playing through your hold later. Thanks for posting!

quote:Kaelyn wrote:Budkin Way:
Entrance: I assume this takes place post-Turning? If so, how can both Tueno and New Tueno exist? Or is this earlier in the timeline, and New Tueno is some colonization effort?

It's late so I'm going to delay responding to almost everything. But I thought perhaps I could at least mention: This is intended to take place post-Grand Event. The joke is supposed to be that the signposts disagree on what's to the east because everyone else calls the country "New Tueno" but they themselves insist they're "Just Plain Tueno". I think it just struck me as a very "Tuenan" thing to do.

Okay, now let me try actually responding to all the things that were said. First of all, thank you for taking a look and posting feedback in the first place! As well as for the demos, Nuntar. Secondly, more specific responses.

Nuntar:

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×1S1E: "lol nope"? It's a pretty easy room, it just looks worse than it really is (as the Negotiator says, the "enforcement mechanism" was "broken" a bit by the briar). My solution is under 200 moves.

1S1W: Maybe I'll remove the mimic-side checkpoints, then, and see how folks feel about it. I'm happy with the the first three rooms being pretty easy since they sort of gatekeep the rest of the level behind green doors anyway.

1W: I originally had machinations of using the fact that a weaponless citizen player role can "carry around" weapons in some later room, thus requiring this "tutorial" of that fact that only requires you to realize that and is free afterward, but I never really came up with anything great for that idea. I still want to keep this room in, though, since I feel like it's a neat thing to discover if you haven't already and maybe it'll inspire somebody to make more serious use of the idea.

1S2W: Really, I'm okay with any solution that at least involves the player intentionally freezing-then-unfreezing the mimic with an aumtlich at some point to keep him in place for a bit and make it down the corridor. Your demo looks fine to me.

2S2W: It's only as tedious as it is for you because you did it an unintended way that doesn't use the gentryii. I think the problem is that you can use both wraithwings at once, but I thoughtlessly included "The puzzle twice" for symmetry aesthetic reasons; I'm wondering if maybe I should lock one of them behind a door requiring 3 of the 4 buttons be pressed at once (i.e., one wubba brought up but not both), and make your solution a secret room without any gentryii heads available for use.

2S1W: My demo actually does get the mimics adjacent for part of it, but unsticks them later.

2S: I assume you mean "queen" when you say "eye", since it serves basically the same purpose here. In my demo I have only one turn to spare when I reach the safe spot after stabbing her, which means moving her one space farther would leave me -1 turn (losing 2 per tile). So I can't verify that moving her farther out would remain solvable, although it's certainly possible.

Kaelyn:

(Obviously what I said in the previous post, plus...)

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×FD--Entrance: Yeah, I don't want a player stuck on the first three rooms so they're supposed to be really easy. This was more or less haphazardly put together as far as "being an orb puzzle" goes.

1S: Well, it's a first introduction to "bonking mimic against unmoving monsters" which as you may imagine is an important technique to know for this hold. With what you say about your room tastes I may have to apologize to you for a few later rooms though x_X

1W: I agree there's a bit of cleanup to this room, but this is a place where the puzzle design kind of gets diluted by the aesthetic concerns a bit? I want it to feel like the depths are a neglected, overgrown mess so a bit of messy tarstuff/briar in this location rather than a super neat single pile of 2x2 tar surrounded by the stuff feels more right even though I agree it makes the latter portion of the room a tiny bit more fillery? I would argue that on the balance the room is just not overall long enough for me to justify messing with it, unless a lot of people are annoyed by it.

1S2W: I'd probably have to see your demo to know whether you did it the intended way or not. But you can read my comment to Nuntar on this room also.

2S2W: Maybe I should refer you to my comment to Nuntar on this one too. An alternative change I could make is to scrap the symmetry (maybe make it look like some more damage to the level "destroyed" the symmetry being necessary?) and also the secret room thing.

3S1W: Yeah, it's pretty simple with only 4 constructs. I'm just going to say that maybe this prepares the player a bit mentally for a room a couple of levels in the future, as well as maybe gives some wish fulfillment of me for being a "free" construct room (just compare what you'd have to do in this room without stealth, ugh).

1S1E: Well, the shape you need the mimics in is fairly simple, and there's lots of broken wall you can carve out to help you make that shape. Also the doors close when the mimics first walk in, and that can be taken advantage of to turn some shapes into slightly different ones. I suppose if this generally seems disproportionately hard to people then I could think of making it a secret or revising it or something.

Other: Comment on CS is a good point, I'll consider it at least.

The master wall/entrance to postmastery was placed haphazardly at the last second in an "oh, I should probably put this somewhere" as I was getting ready to put the hold out for testing. Maybe I could stick that somewhere in the final level instead or something.

I haven't had the time to play through all of the levels yet but I'll just post my demos so far because I am pretty sure I didn't do some of the rooms as intended. Check out Clockwork Basement 1N1W, 1N1E and 2N1E in particular.

When I've had some time to play through the rest of the hold I'll try my best to write up some proper comments on individual rooms. [Last edited by Aquator at 04-23-2019 12:43 PM]

Yep, Aquator broke my rooms, as is to be expected XD
You even managed to break FD 2S2W while apparently only using one ww to do it, I think? Anyway uh...

UPDATE:
-FD 2S2W now only has one wraithwing to cut down on room repetitiveness and at least remove some unintended solutions. (Original FD 2S2W moved to WS temporarily, still considering making a gentryii-less version of it a secret room.)
-FD 1S1W mimic area checkpoints removed.
-CB 1N1W, 1N1E, and 2N1E modified to hopefully prevent the breaks seen in the previous post from happening.

Minor Update:
-Changed Cold Storage 1W to have rock golems instead of evil eyes as its "target monsters". I doubt it was possible to succeed by just pushing fluffs into the north "monster traps" before, but I think it's better if it's clear the player shouldn't even try that method.

Facility Depths: has some fun , cool rooms
1S2W : liked it very much
2S : did not liked this one. is too simple , not interesting
1S1E : very challenging ! a bit painfull to solve, but interesting .

Clockwork Basement : nice puzzles. Liked it
I do not know if the posibility to place time token where you want makes a difference in these puzzles
1N1W : did not use the chained Gentryii.
3N : maybe add more checkpoint ?
4N1E : still working on it, too challenging

Facility Entryway : so far personally liked this level the least
3N : maybe i'm missing something. Just kill the eye? thought there might be a puzzle to be able to go to the sides of the room, but there is nothing?
1N1W : i hate this one. Stalwarts move after babies cut from mud. that is odd, and movement order seems relevant in this room.

Thanks for taking a look, KituU; you found some new leaks including one that should've been blindingly obvious. I'll think about making gaps in the blue doors, maybe, although I do want testing to get the "authentic experience" that a real player would later have, including needing to finish each level before going to the next.

A few more specific responses:

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×First off, you broke every room that I'm fixing in the update listed below.

FD:
2S: I'm not sure what's "too simple" about this one, I found it pretty tough and at least one or two other testers liked it alright.

CB: The hourglass is more than just putting time token where you want it+using it right away, although the challenge in 1N does require the use of that property. The fact that it acts as a numerical supply that's actually on the map is pretty relevant too (used in 2N1W, for instance). At any rate, once I had gotten partway through this level I made the commitment that hourglasses would be the only source of time travel in the hold for thematic/plot reasons, so here we are. I don't think it's always necessary to use every aspect of a new thing just to show it off and make interesting puzzles with it anyway.
3N: Yes, more checkpoints in the update. Forgot them here.
4N1E: I admit this one's pretty mind-bending. Not entirely sure whether this one or a certain timeclone-based room in the final level is harder.

FE: I went into this knowing the stalwart rooms would be some people's least favorite. It's an assumed risk, but I feel like this is an important kind of puzzle to address in the theme of "stealth", besides being an important turning point of the plot.
3N: Bad case of "solution tunnel vision" on my part. Maybe I've fixed it now.
1N1W: I guarantee you that the order you form the babies (i.e., the only move order you have any control over) is not important to the solution, so long as you leave behind the right ones.

You know, that's not "precisely" the solution I found to the room's main problem, but it does engage with the puzzle I really wanted the room to be. I can be happy with that, maybe even put in a challenge for not taking the hourglass.

Entrance: Add a conquer token (or an arrow), to make sure the scored solution solves the room. The room itself seems like it should be solved by random movements and rotations.

1S1E: Surprisingly fun. I wonder if it is possible to get the mimics into all the passages. (I don't think the room would be solvable from that state.)

2S2W: I don't think my solution actually required moving the gentryii. I also don't think it required the second wraithwing.

[Added after reading thread:]

2S: Very simple, though my solution didn't have extra time. I also didn't really use both mimics. The solution would work (almost) as is with either mimic missing.

1W: I think it's fine.

Clockwork Basement:
1N1W: The mimic and gentryii didn't play any part in the solution.

2N1E: Seems too easy.

1N1E: Didn't use the mimic or the token.

(Reached the secret, but didn't do it yet.)

Facility Entryway:

2N: I had a general plan, but the actual solution found by guessing.

1N2E: Nice concept.

2N2E: Another room where finding the actual solution was guesswork.

3N: Completely broken.

2N1W: Most of the room is just a show.

1N1W: There is the reasonable trick of leaving the roach alive, but choosing the right combinations of monsters to leave to the left is guesswork.

2N1E: There is a method to designing the path and timing for the first batch of roaches with the construct. I guess there is also a method for designing the trap for the rock and goblin. The rest seems to be just trial and error with the timing, which somehow worked. (I think is the room I like least in the first levels.)

Main Laboratories: Mostly nice rooms.

1N1E: Do the letters and numbers in this room mean anything?

2S1W: It is much easier to just get rid of one of the mimics.

1E: I kept the golems alive until they reached the target.

2S1E: Probably broken, since I only used the clones to open the doors, without resolving the maze.

Cold Storage:

1W: I killed the last eye with the mimic, though with correct timing I can probably get them all with puff. [After reading thread: Ah. So I was supposed to release the stalwarts. Maybe add a secret room with eyes and no stalwarts.]

1S2W: Another random sequence.

3W: Also a magic sequence, but still satisfying.

1N1W: I'm still not sure how I managed to solve it. (I think it is a fair room.)

Thanks for taking a look, bbb! As usual, of course, I'd probably need to see your demos to know for sure what you broke/didn't, how/how to fix, and whether it's already been fixed by now. I'll try and respond more specifically to your comments.

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×FD:
Entrance: The player can't leave except to the south (thanks to a cutscene), so a conquer token hardly seems necessary. While you can solve it with random movements, I wouldn't say "should".

2S2W: Again, I'd need a demo to see for sure.

CB:
1N1W: I can almost guarantee I've fixed this. Try again or I could at least see your demo to check, though.

2N1E+1N1E: Maybe you found the same leaks as Aquator, and it's been fixed?

FE:
2N: I don't guarantee that you can find a solution to this one through careful analysis anyway, but it should be quite doable by just trying things to see what works, IMO.

2N2E: This is intended to feel like a combat room where the player is the "shield" rather than the "sword". I wouldn't exactly call it guesswork, but again, I'm perfectly happy with not knowing exactly what to do until you try here.

3N: Probably fixed now? I had some bad "solution tunnel vision" when I built this, or else meant to put in some force arrows and just plain forgot.

2N1E: I don't think it's realistic to look at this room and expect to know precisely what the stalwart will do in it, sure. But I wouldn't really call it guesswork either? In my opinion it's about setting up the mirrors to protect the stalwart from getting surrounded early on, and understanding that is basically enough to successfully solve the room. Again, this one kind of "half-cinematic", with the feeling that the Negotiatior is setting everything up so the stalwart can succeed, which he would never have done without her unseen help.

ML:
1N1E: It's a reference to the song "Jenny". You know, the one with the phone number everyone knows about?

2S1W: That's fine by me; I'd consider that "being given more tools than you absolutely need". I suspect optimizers will want to keep them both around for most of the room, at any rate.

1E: Neat, although they don't exactly move anyway even while alive

2S1E: That sounds impossible--you can't place a time token anywhere except the firetraps, and then the recording clone is stuck in the hot tiles until the green door opens. I'd have to see a demo.

CS:
1W: I'll consider that secret room idea, although I may not be able to solve it myself x_x At least this leak I managed to anticipate ahead of time.

3W: I don't consider this magical, just a different kind of combat room: Fighting against the stalwart's natural, stupid inclination to get himself stuck. To me at least, "magical" would mean that there's no clear reason for why you make the moves you do, but in my opinion it's quite clear what your goals are and what you need to do to achieve them (block his path with mimics/their swords) at every step along the way.

1N1W: It does feel like a bit of a juggling act, I'll admit, but at least the thing you're luring around only moves once every five turns?

×
Facility Entryway:
1N1W : gave me a headache, predicting movement of this 3 stalwarts is very difficult for me, used trial and error, no joy in solving this puzzle at all.
3N : maybe still too easy ?

Main Laboratories : the best so far, enjoyed so much
2S1E : do not understand : the timeclones used only after killing nests, to open doors?

UPDATE:
-Splattered checkpoints all over the rooms that were missing them in ML and TS. Please let me know whether these placements are good or terrible (as well as the old ones where I didn't forget to put them.
-Leak fix in ML 2S1E: No putting tokens after the hot tiles allowed.
-Another leak fix to FE 3N, which I think should finally require something resembling what I intended.

Other responses:

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×Sorry about the forgotten checkpoints! I wonder if I really should change FE 1N1W somehow, but I'm not entirely sure how to preserve the "concept" without the room still being disliked for essentially the same reason.

Glad you liked ML! I was honestly a little worried that "mimic platform shuffling" would be even more reviled than the stalwart stuff.

I was interested to see that your "shape" for CS 1N2W was different from mine, and also that you made a different configuration for 2S1W. Honestly I'm not entirely sure I like that one since the idea is to require that the gentryii hold down the buttons, not the briar--which I could enforce. Particularly I want to force the player to use the "diagonal blocking" property of the fluff in this room, but your solution basically just made a wall. It still isn't trivial, though, so I'm wondering if it'd be better to allow your kind of solution and put the thing I originally wanted as a secret/challenge/something else.

UPDATE:
Trying out a new version of Facility Entryway 2N, with the following modifications:
-Entry from the east blocks clearing the room (entering that way has always been kind of a cheat in my book).
-There are powder kegs on firetraps hooked up to some new cracked orbs, which the Negotiator also comments on when she enters the room from the south. This should make solving the room more predictable.
-To counterbalance the easier difficulty, more guards have been added.

The old FE 2N (but with the button preventing clearing it from the east still added) is now in postmastery, possibly just temporarily.

I also copied CS 3S1W to a room just south of itself and made the leak fix (gentryii must be on the plates, not briar) that I'm considering there. Still not sure if this will be the new official version of that room or a secret room.

×so i did it in editor, send image. Find this version a little more difficult, but not necessarily more fun. Maybe it is repetitive doing the room 2 times. Anyway, it was't obvious to me the first "wall solution" , struggle a bit to find it.

FE 2N : nice! new version is more fun (although it can't be cheating if different entries are available, imo)

Still find FE 3N a bit too easy , are you supposed to wake the eye ? only used sleeping eye to get mimic to northen pplate

CB 3N : maybe placing a checkpoint near the pplates? where 1 time clone ends

×I hadn't made any paths to the "new" CS 2S1W yet because I hadn't made any concrete decisions. If I were to make that room a secret, I would probably do what I did with "similar secret" rooms in my mix and match contest entries, where the player is offered the choice to solve the secret room instead and, if they did so, can push special command in the normal room to autosolve it after a cutscene long enough to make optimization of the room meaningful (with the excuse of the rooms being "entangled" or something). So no player except an optimizer (who would see the rooms differently) would ever really need to do both. But I still haven't decided whether to fix it or add the secret separately.

I'll add the suggested checkpoint; it's possible by now that you're finding FE 3N easy just because it is (even when intended) but as usual I'd need a demo to be sure. My solution doesn't wake the eye.

×Temporal Summit has great puzzles!
Was very much amused with the introduction to the level: i was surprised to suddenly have a sword, and had a good laugh after killing the brain.
TS 2W was my favorite, so creative

So, had a lot of fun playing your hold !! Thank you for making it!
(Master wall : i stepped on it , but couldn't go anywhere)

Thanks, KituU! Your demos pointed out a few derps on my part, which I address in the newest Update:
-The cutscene in TS Entrance had been "dummied out" for room editing/testing purposes, but it should really be in place by now. Said cutscene points out explicitly to the player that Beethro needs to maintain stealth until the level is clear, and why; it also contains some important Plot.
-Somehow the "fake Beethro" appearance for character swapping purposes had changed to some kind of citizen instead of the sworded "Beethro in Disguise" as it was supposed to be set to. This is fixed now.
-Challenge script in TS 1N made the amateur mistake of awarding if the room was just plain clear, which is definitely not what I wanted.
-Beethro isn't supposed to be able to enter TS 2S for Plot purposes, but I kinda forgot that I gave the player a stick in 1S. Soo...I'm adding another "weird time paradox beethro" in the way to hopefully prevent the player from just pushing the original one out of the way.

Apart from that, your solution to 2W isn't quite what I had in mind..timeclones aren't supposed to be allowed sticks in that room. But I think your solution's alright, really clever, so I don't see a great reason to mess with it unless someone uses the same "leak" to completely trivialize the room. I'm also not entirely sure how to enforce that upper hallway with the stick in it as a "Beethro only, no timeclones" zone any more than I already have anyway.

disoriented, I'm in a poor environment to listen to your voice samples right this minute. Are they Beethro? Beethro doesn't have terribly many lines in this hold, just the entrance, 1S1W, and 1S of Temporal Summit. I intended to record Silas's lines (that is, the intro text of all the levels) myself. There's a bunch of various incidental character lines scattered all over the place, but I wouldn't want to put all that on one person anyway.

×The theme of TS , not being able to kill with sword, is so creative and fun, wonderful
Could not see the cut scene in TS , although finding out when trying to kill the brain, was so much fun, ...maybe add the cutscene after the room is cleared ??

TS 1S: Beethro can still push Temp Statue to the east, and enter TS 2S

TS 2W : don't know why "timeclones aren't supposed to be allowed sticks in that room" , but given the difficulty to record sworded timeclones to get to orbs, seems like many players will work out with a stick option . One timeclone is easily given a stick. I loved the puzzle so much !

×To make the TS Entrance cutscene work, you'd need to restore to back before you ever entered the level. I dummied it out by setting the variable that says "this cutscene already happened" to the "yes" value, so re-entering after that value had been set won't activate it now. As for removing it, well, there's really no way to do that? I need to have something to explain why Beethro is present at all, and how the character-swapping works, which is all in that cutscene. If a player wants to see the results of stabbing the brain after being warned, then they still can, of course.

I'll add another 'statue' in 2S to hopefully really fix the problem. This one at (19, 28) facing west. Before I even post such an update maybe you can tell me whether there's still some way to get around that.

As for 2W, the entire intended challenge is to find a way to stave off the constructs, kill the bundle of roaches and eyes in the center, and have each timeclone record movements that will get him past the unmoving monsters without stabbing any of them in the final timeline, and then to push the timeclones into the east/west trap areas once the recordings are done. I didn't find the last part terribly difficult once a consistent way to handle the first two is worked out. Letting a timeclone use the stick totally defeats the originally intended idea of the room, but since you seemed to like "cheating" your way out of the original idea (which presumably means it isn't trivial and boring), perhaps I could make the original idea a challenge or secret version instead.

I think I conflated the complaints about FE 1N1W with those about 2N at some point, and wound up remodeling the latter thinking it was the source of all the complaints. As 1N1W goes, I still feel like it's not really that difficult. I mean--sure, it's a room where you can't know what exactly to do as you walk in, but I don't think it's that hard to see what minor adjustments you can make to make it work after trying something. Your solution even proved to me that more than one configuration of tar babies will solve the room, and I'm convinced that leaving the roach alive longer didn't actually change the stalwarts' behavior in your demo, since you killed him as soon as they beat the last tar baby anyway (which is when they would've started targeting him).

disoriented:
Okay, I had a chance to listen to the voice samples now. They sound pretty good! The Negotiatior probably has the most lines in the hold as individual parts go, since she's the "main character" and all. I haven't really counted them or taken the idea of voice acting quite seriously enough to make a transcript yet, which I probably should do, but I know she has at least one or two lines in every level--and several in the first one anyway. It may be too big an ask.

FE 1N1W : leaving the roach alive longer is needed , because Stalwart that kills last baby moves first. So the other 2 Stalwarts move towards the roach

TS 2W : it can't be "cheating" if player doesn't know original intended idea and uses resources available. Once created, rooms have a life of their own, and different solutions will come. It is your decision , but i do not see how to reinforce your original idea though

Don't get me wrong--I agree with you about a room getting a life of its own. I'm just trying to describe my enthusiasm for the original solution separately from the not-originally-intended one you found. At this point (unless someone reveals a way to use the stick to absolutely trivialize the room) I don't really intend to force the issue in the actual room itself.
I know exactly how I can detect it for a challenge, which is maybe what I'll do. Or maybe Chaco knows a better way to keep the timeclones out of the stick zone, in which case it could be a secret room.

UPDATE:
-While going through the hold to make the script, I realized that I had already put in an entrance to postmastery a long time ago! It's in Clockwork Basement Entrance, the stairs it looks like you're not able to use when you first get there. Derp. So, I removed Facility Depths 2W and the passage leading to it.
-Also added the extra "temporal statue" to TS 1S as outlined in previous couple of posts
-Fixed dialogue in 2N1W repeating itself every time the player re-enters the room, after noticing that would happen while making transcript.

On that note, I have also attached the hold's transcript to this post! It should give anyone interested an idea of how much work there is to do. The only thing I'm thinking of adding is what KituU suggested earlier, a stalwart complaining and/or panicking if a fluff gets too close to him or whatever. The intro texts except for TS and WS (the postmastery level) are entirely Silas's lines, which I intend to handle myself. I might also do Veritas's voice and/or a couple of the incidental guards or whatever.
I was thinking I might rewrite TS's intro text if nobody was interested in voicing N, so that all the intros would be fully voiced except for maybe WS. We'll see.